On May 12, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee released the latest version of the Digital Asset Clarity Act, the long-awaited piece of legislation that could finally define where different types of cryptoassets fit within the broader financial system. Focused primarily on crypto market structure and the division of authority between regulators, the bill also addresses stablecoins and truly decentralized parts of the crypto ecosystem.
The 309-page Senate amendment comes nearly 10 months after the House passed its own version of the Clarity Act in July 2025. The new draft, scheduled for committee review and vote this Thursday, reflects months of negotiations between lawmakers, regulators and industry participants. Its final shape could heavily influence not only the future of crypto regulation in the United States, but also how other jurisdictions approach the crypto market oversight.
As Strategy’s Michael Saylor put it, “Last night’s CLARITY Act markup would unlock the next wave of Digital Capital, Digital Credit, and Digital Equity in the U.S. and globally — institutional validation for BTC, a framework for STRC-powered digital yield markets, and broader adoption of MSTR.”
Cryptoassets jurisdictions
One of the central goals of the legislation is to resolve the long-running jurisdictional conflict between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — a battle that has defined much of the US crypto industry over the past several years. Under the current system, the SEC has broadly argued that many token sales resemble securities offerings under the Howey test, while the CFTC has increasingly claimed authority over spot crypto commodity markets such as bitcoin and ether trading. The result has been a fragmented regulatory landscape in which exchanges, brokers and token issuers often faced overlapping oversight, unclear compliance standards and the constant threat of enforcement actions.
The House version relied heavily on the concept of a “mature blockchain,” allowing sufficiently decentralized networks to transition toward a commodity-style framework overseen by the CFTC. The Senate amendment takes a more nuanced approach, introducing new categories such as “network tokens” and “ancillary assets.” A network token is treated as a digital commodity intrinsically linked to the functioning of a blockchain network and generally considered a non-security in secondary trading markets. An ancillary asset is a token whose value still materially depends on the entrepreneurial or managerial efforts of a founding team or related parties. It can evolve into a network token over time.
Stablecoins rules
The latest draft also hardens the regulatory stance toward stablecoins, particularly yield-bearing products that increasingly resemble synthetic bank deposits. The earlier House version largely deferred stablecoin issuance rules to the separate GENIUS Act, which focused on reserve backing, disclosure standards, federal supervision and liquidity requirements.
The Senate amendment goes further by targeting yield-bearing stablecoins. Under the new proposal, firms would generally be prohibited from paying users passive interest or yield solely for holding payment stablecoins, particularly when those products economically resemble traditional bank deposits. However, stablecoin companies may still be able to offer rewards tied to specific trading activity, liquidity provision or blockchain participation.
CLARITY’s practical impact
The practical impact would be felt most directly by centralized crypto exchanges, brokers, and custodians, such as Coinbase or Kraken, and stablecoin issuers like Circle and Paxos. The bill expands obligations around disclosures, customer protection, anti-money-laundering controls and market surveillance, while simultaneously carving out broader protections for more decentralized parts of the crypto space. Those protections include limits on treating software developers as financial intermediaries, recognition of decentralized governance systems as legally distinct from coordinated entities, and exemptions for certain non-custodial activities such as self-staking and protocol-level token distributions.
The result is a framework that increasingly separates centralized crypto finance from decentralized blockchain infrastructure and transforms crypto from a legally ambiguous industry into a federally regulated financial market structure
Yet, it is still a long road before the Clarity Act reaches President Donald Trump’s desk. Following Thursday’s markup in the Senate Banking Committee, lawmakers will likely need to reconcile the proposal with the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, a parallel crypto market legislation advanced by the Senate Agriculture Committee in January 2026. DCIA is an operational bill that establishes registration, supervision and compliance rules for crypto intermediaries. Only after the two frameworks are aligned could the legislation move to a full Senate vote, where major bills typically require support from at least 60 senators to advance toward final passage.
